Bartiromo falsehood: Health reform bill costs a "trillion dollars"
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SUMMARY: Maria Bartiromo falsely asserted as fact that the health care reform proposal under consideration in Congress will cost a "trillion dollars over 10 years." In fact, the Congressional Budget Office found that the House reform bill "would result in a net increase in the federal budget deficit of $239 billion over the 2010-2019 period."
On MSNBC's Morning Joe on July 27, CNBC host Maria Bartiromo falsely asserted as fact that the health care reform proposal under consideration in Congress will cost a "trillion dollars over 10 years." In fact, the Congressional Budget Office has found that the House tri-committee bill "would result in a net increase in the federal budget deficit of $239 billion over the 2010-2019 period," not $1 trillion. CBO has not released full cost estimates of the health care reform proposals being considered by the Senate. Bartiromo also stated that experts she had gathered for an upcoming CNBC health care special told her that the health care reform proposal is "too expensive."
During the program, Time magazine editor-at-large Mark Halperin said to Bartiromo: "You've convened an incredible group on this special, people from all -- government, private sector and all that. What is their argument against the general direction of what Congress is doing now? What are the things that concern them that they'd like to see changed." Bartiromo responded: "Well, number one, it's too expensive. A trillion dollars over ten years is just too expensive. We don't have the money for that." Similarly, MSNBC analyst Pat Buchanan later stated, "I think you're dead right, that a trillion dollars given the deficits and the rest of it is simply too expensive, too rich for our blood right now."
In fact, CBO's July 17 cost estimate of the bill as introduced states:
According to CBO's and JCT's assessment, enacting H.R. 3200 would result in a net increase in the federal budget deficit of $239 billion over the 2010-2019 period. That estimate reflects a projected 10-year cost of the bill's insurance coverage provisions of $1,042 billion, partly offset by net spending changes that CBO estimates would save $219 billion over the same period, and by revenue provisions that JCT estimates would increase federal revenues by about $583 billion over those 10 years.
From the July 27 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe:
HALPERIN: You've convened an incredible group on this special, people from all -- government, private sector and all that. What is their argument against the general direction of what Congress is doing now? What are the things that concern them that they'd like to see changed?
BARTIROMO: Well, number one, it's too expensive. A trillion dollars over 10 years is just too expensive. We don't have the money for that.
[...]
BUCHANAN: I'd like to ask Maria a question. You said, and I think you're dead right, that a trillion dollars given the deficits and the rest of it is simply too expensive, too rich for our blood right now. What about the argument that, look, what -- ask first what we can afford, how much we can afford, and then once you get that down -- suppose it's 500 billion or 300 billion, whatever -- and then decide what you can buy with that and get some kind of agreement? Would -- it seems to me Barack Obama, in the long run, if he's not going to get this super program, is gonna be able or gonna have to settle for something like that, isn't he?
When a bill involves spending and raisng revenue, it's OK to refer to the spending as a cost.
If a man gets $1,000 from a part-time job, and uses the money to buy a TV for $1,000, the TV cost him $1,000 even though he didn't add to his personal debt.
Bartiromo oversteps when she asserts as fact that it is "too expensive" and that "we cannot afford it." The Bush tax cuts cost $1.35 trillion over a 10 year period. If we can afford the useless tax cuts we can afford universal healthcare. When total expected cost of healthcare in general in America is expected to be $35 trillion over the next 10 years, $1 trillion is a small sum to pay to hopefully cap costs and provide help for the 45 million uninsured in this country.
"When is 'never', Alex?"
"RIGHT YOU ARE, for $200."
"I'll take Right Wing Health Care Propaganda for $400, please."
"That's the daily double!"
If you want to hold every president to every campaign pledge he'd ever made, you'd be disappointed by every president since Washington. (Example: Even Linclon pledged NOT to interfere in a state's rights to allow slavery! That didn't quite work out as planned, did it?)
The fact is that while I have plenty of problems with Obama's plan, it by far the best one that's been seriously proposed IN THIS COUNTRY so far, and I think it's both good and important legslation whether it meets a specific campaign plegde that I don't even remember and that I never considered relevant to the problem. Other than this one bit of trivia, you haven't really pointed out why the plan as proposed is bad, relative to the current system.
And this argument is that this is better than nothing is just not good enough. If something as important as health care is going to be overhauled I'd rather what we end up with doesn't get enacted by default. I applaud Obama for tackling a tough issue, but that doesn't mean it deserves no cost scrutiny and let's just do it because it's better than nothing.
Plus... and you still haven't given me a link, so I don't knwo for sure, but... was the $2500 an ESTIMATE, based on ASSUMPTIONS that the campaign made, as opposed to a COMPAIGN PROMISE? I strongly suspect the former. Somehow I don't ever rememeber thinking, "Great - $2500 raise next year!" And I followed the campaign pretty closely.
Your text to link here...
If that quote (C-n-P'd from the Globe Article) is correct, then it prooves my point. It's an ESTIMATE. A GOAL. Not a CAMPAIGN PROMISE. It's something he BELIEVES CAN BE DONE. If he has new information now, that he didn't have then, then I'd have no problem with him revising that previously optimistic apprasal of the situation.
Only a conservative would still be expected to believe on Wednesday what they said on Monday, despite whatever might have happened on Tuesday! ;)
Did you forget that when businesses provide health insurance, they get a tax break. Who pays for that?
You!
Also, let's throw out this notion that this (or any) one piece of legislation will fix everything (on any given issue.) Issues don't go away. They evolve and will need to be dealt with over time. That's why you need to accept incrimental measures otherwise nothing will ever get done. (A conservative's dream!) Letting the perfect get in the way of the good will lead to perpetual inaction. We've been going the wrong way for decades now, LET'S TRY A NEW DIRECTION. You can't dig your way out of a hole.
Besides if the Democrats want it and if it's such good plan there is nothing stopping it. They have the votes, nobody to blame except themselves.
Did you pay $10,000 for health insurance last year for your family? If so, converting to public option would save you $2,500 by simply eliminating the profits and overhead of the typical for-profit (and even many not-for-profit) health insurance firms.
In the aggregate, that's how savings would work.
For specific payers there will be a wide variation. If you're single 28 year old male with no chronic illnesses, you likely pay very little.
For some families who may have a chronic condition (that is easily treated) or a pre-existing condition, insurance has likely been beyond reach as insurance firms literally avoid them by "rating" them with high premiums.
But I'll take our current system of gov't, with all it's faults a quirks and even it's imperfect candidates. I do have at least that much pragmatism in me. As hard as it is to reform just health care, no one's going to reform society anytime soon. (And of course - no one can agree on what exactly is wrong with it anyway!)
Bill Maher
How DARE you use Obama's words and promises like that. It is shocking!!
Sheesh, this has been posted over and over.
18,000 people DIE each year due to a lack of health care.
1/2 of all bankruptcies are due to health care costs.
Then there is the 18K who die each year without healthcare. Well here are some numbers from your beloved liberal Factcheck.org. They say that about 12M of the 47M are eligible for some kind of government healthcare right now. 6M are illegal immigrants who we shouldn't be paying for anyway. And another 9.1M make over $75K per year, 4.7M of that make for than $84K. So at least those people making more that $84K per year should be able to buy some insurance. Now with some simple math is see that 22.7M out of the 47M uninsured could either have insurance or we shouldn't be paying for their insurance. So what percentage of the 18K falls into that category. That's about half. But ya know what? 8,000 who would did is also unacceptable in this great nations.
That leaves 24.3M without healthcare. I agree, thats too many. But what's the solution. I really don't think its to give everything over to the feds. Do they have a track record of efficiency? We all know the answer is no. So instead of handing this whole thing over to the governemt to mess up even more why don't we first focus on getting those 24.3M some insurance. The real solution is certainly somewhere in the middle of government regulation and a free martket solution. My best guess, it's a combination of the two. Maybe throught government regulation we could cut through some the the red tape and have a more efficient insurance law. I don't have a problem the government requiring insurance comanies to cover pre-existing conditions. Let's make insurance laws more uniform from state to state so that layers of regulation can go away. Let's try giving people a tax credit they could use to buy healthcare. Maybe we could devide up that 24.4M between the insurance companies and they could find a way to get them insured. I really really think that this problem can be solved without giving everything over to the government. Problem is, we haven't really tried and I blame the republicans for that. I certainly don't think we should rush this through and end up with something worse than what we already have.
Profits over People!!!
Economics textbooks tell us that concentrated markets reduce the competitive behavior that benefits consumers and lead to outsize profits for the dominant firms. Predictably, health-care premiums shot up more than 90 percent between 2000 and 2007, while the profits of the 10 largest insurers increased 428 percent over the same period. Clinton had promised us managed care within managed competition. Instead, the insurers took control of our care and managed to effectively end competition. Neat trick.
The above from a arrticle by Ezra Klein" The Ghost of Clintoncare" : http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/24/AR2009072401876.html
"Can you tell me what the current Health Care Crisis is?"
You already know the answer to that question. Deliberately ignoring facts is worse than stupidity. You're ignoring them. That reveals your intellectual dishonesty and ethical paucity.
Please show the class where I mentioned "health care crisis"?
Obviously you and yours have never dealt with medical malpractice against a loved one.
My litmus test of a questioner is if they lead with tort reform their information sources are the insurance lobbyists and typical Republican mouthpieces. The corollary is that they NEVER mention insurance companies as a cost.
However, it is also true that many specialty doctors pay very high insurance premiums doe to fear of litigation, and they also add tests or other procedures as protection from litigation.
I'll tell you what Mark B - when you figure out that there are still programs initiated by FDR that are in existence today, or that Arabs contributed to the advancement of algebra, or that Timothy McVeigh was not a Democrat - then maybe we'll waste our time trying to explain the complicated things to you like healthcare. OK?
Second, it was conservatives just like these who were so concerned about the potential dirty lyrics of our national anthem (Louis Louis, by the Kingsmen) that they ended up forcing the FBI to spend $50 million investigating it. Of course, that was a -mental- health crisis...
They estimate the cost at $1 trillion...that means it's probably going to cost at least $5 trillion.
They estimate the savings to be $800 billion...that means it's probably going to produce "zero" savings.
That tells me that instead of a net cost of $240 billion...it's more likely to end up costing about $6 trillion.
No thanks.
That's what scares people about turning our health care system over to the federal government. Hell, it's even scaring conservative Democrats and they ARE the government.
Profits over People!!! Yell it from the highest mountain, Tommy.
Ended competition and drove up cost!
Now, that may be the right thing to do, but I'd rather have that doctor making those decisions just based on whether you really need your kid's tonsils out or whether it might make more sense just to change -- maybe they have allergies. Maybe they have something else that would make a difference."
Really? So are you calling Obama a liar when you way the insurers are taking control? Above is what he said at last week's press conference. Seems to me he is saying the doctor is in charge, not the insurance company. Now his example is not good for costs either, but it also seems to suggest that what you and Obama are saying are checks and balances in the system.